What do you do when you get an email from a compromised account?
Quite often you can see these messages have been sent from a friend’s email however it is clear that it has been dispatched by some illicit hacker who has invaded someone’s personal territory – and how dare they?
I am of course immediately sorry that it has happened and I sincerely hope that nothing of importance has been put at risk. However, I have learned that it also acts as a prompt for openly and randomly being completely supportive which invariably gets an interesting conversation going.
It is guaranteed that the emails sent are spam, phishing and/or of dubious (sexual) origins. Invariably when this happens, the owner of the email is utterly mortified that something so ghastly has happened. They often need guidance on what to do and more often than not some reassurance that it is not the end of the world.
As soon as I get an email like this I hit “Reply to all” and send a message that runs along the lines of ……
Hi (friend),
It looks like your account has been hacked! Sadly it happens to the best of us but the good thing is that it often gets conversations going with people we haven’t spoken to in a while!!
Hope you get it sorted but in the meantime, you might like to change your log in details.
Let me know if I can be of any help at all.
All the best
Georgina
Dependent on the relationship with that person, I will add something that is relevant and pertinent but always open, relaxed and friendly.
The brilliant thing is that EVERY single time that I send a message like this, it starts an interesting conversation re-invigorating old relationships or better still introducing new ones.
So far in the last few months, I have been introduced to new and valuable contacts, had a good giggle, instigated some press coverage for more than one project and done some business too. All as a direct result of being open, random and supportive.
I love serendipity – don’t you?